You're Crazy with Caffeine

Well Em, just like this little pup up above, your body does in fact crave various things while under duress.  For the dog, he's probably craving stronger chair legs...or for it to be quick and painless!

Over time, people create their own self-defense mechanisms to help them get cope with stressful events.  Say for instance that you love Dr. Pepper...the best way to get your mind off a tasking situation may be to take a cold, refreshing, esophagus-burning swig of the Pepper (41mg of caffeine in 12oz).   

The medical reason why people crave caffeine during stressful is simply that it is slightly addictive and that people use it as a coping mechanism.  Caffeine blocks the hormone adenosine which is the body's natural tranquility response.  In doing so, it makes caffeine a central nervous system stimulant giving your body that notorious "boost of energy". In other words, you get that boost of energy by the adenosine receptor cites being blocked by the caffeine.  It also stimulates the adrenal glands to produce more of the stress hormone known as adrenaline, which in some aspects is the body's natural version of caffeine.  

Bottom Line is this....When your body is confronted with a stressful situation adrenaline is released which initiates the fight or flight response.  When your body realizes that your adrenaline is starting to sky-rocket it then releases adenosine in order to reduce the anxiety and bring your vitals back to within normal limits.  If however, caffeine in your crutch, then the caffeine blocks the adenosine from reducing your anxiety and actually aggravates it much worse.  I heard it once put that your adrenal glands are the horses that are carrying a wagon load up a stressful hill.  Caffeine would then be the whip that is driving the adrenal glands.  In order to function at your highest capability, the caffeine whip should be replaced with sleep and rest....and yes even YOGA!!!  

In the long term, caffeine actually causes fatigue and reduces your ability to deal with stress. 

You shouldn't be having more than 250mg of caffeine a day...

Medical Fact #4:  This one is for Ryan..."On average when you cough, it is expelled at a  whopping 60mph"

Coffee...Love It or Leave It.

Ahh yes…who can survive without their freshly brewed cup of coffee!! The average American downs about 3 cups of coffee each day and that number is steadily growing. Even the size of the “cups” are getting larger and larger. In fact, this past weekend I stopped at Wawa coming home from ocean city and a woman was filling up one of those monstrous 64 oz plastic mugs with a deep roasted brew. Of course you don’t see that every day and so I couldn’t pass up such a glorious opportunity. As I walked by her I stopped and said, “that’s a lot of coffee you got there mam” to which she replied, “Yup, and I’m gonna drink all before I fall asleep tonight”. The conversation ended as quickly as it started by me saying, “You won’t be falling asleep tonight!”.

Aimee, I’m sure that you are very much aware that for some people, coffee is a necessity for daily functioning. There are of course arguments from both sides, in which some have very good validity. Before I state a few facts about coffee, my advice for everyone is Moderation. Our bodies are well equipped to take in and digest a multitude of natural things such as the seeds of coffea Arabica (coffee), but too much of anything can stress out the body.

In my weight lifting days, I was told two things about coffee from two different sources. One person told me that an apple has just as much caffeine in it as coffee and so that would obviously be the better choice. Well, with comments like that It makes me wonder if the guy ever graduated because apples don’t even have caffeine in them! So that is a total myth. Apples are a good source of carbohydrates and contain various enzymes that work similar to effects of coffee but do it in a much different way.

The other bit of information that was passed along to me was that bodybuilders often down a cup of coffee before heading out on stage because it helps to tighten up the muscles. That in fact is not a myth. Caffeine blocks adenosine, which is a chemical that makes you naturally drowsy. In doing so its constricts the brain's blood vessels, the heart beats rate increases, muscles tighten, the blood pressure booms, blood vessels near the surface constrict and more blood flows to the muscles. But the long term effects can be really tricky. Once the temporary stimulation stops, the brain cells start needing caffeine for stimulation and a sudden neural sluggishness installs.

Ok, so let me just give you some positives and negatives.

Positives:

1. 2-3 cups of coffee a day seem to have minimal to no long term effects on your body.

2. Caffeine has been found also to protect against Parkinson’s disease and depression, which is most likely related to its inhibiting effect on adenosine receptors. Depression is eased because caffeine increases dopamine. Dopamine is the happy feeling hormone produced in the brain.

3. It boosts mood, alertness, and physical performance. However, let me make this clear. Alertness may be enhanced for the perpetual coffee drinker due to the fact that brain cells need to be continually stimulated, but studies show that compared to a non-coffee drinker it does not give them an upper hand in alertness or concentration.

4. Coffee can be used as a laxative if need be.

5. In moderate amounts, it can help decrease post-gym muscle pain.

Negatives:

1. It causes sleep disturbances. Caffeine needs about 12 hours or so to be fully pushed out of your system.

2. It does in fact raise blood pressure.

3. Irritates the stomach lining.

3. And this is in my opinion the worst…More than three cups per day for years, increases loss of bone mineral density. Caffeine is a mild diuretic, speeding up the urination cycle, but "steals" calcium which is lost through urine. Long term, heavy caffeine use leads to a rapid development of osteoporosis.

So, to finally answer your question.

Your body doesn’t need caffeine to function properly and if you choose to stop in taking it, do it gradually or else your blood pressure will plummet and the blood vessels in your head will dilate giving you an extreme migraine. If you can get passed the caffeine withdraw, the best thing you can do for your body in the morning to wake you up is to down a 12-16oz glass of chilled water within 30-40 minutes. On a non-workout day, you also want to eat a healthy breakfast that contains no more than 450 calories.

Medical Fact #3:

If you yelled continuously for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Follow up....Finally!

First, let me apologize for taking so long to blog...Passing this semester was a pretty big deal...just ask my fiance'! 

After reading the interesting findings on coca-cola, a good friend of mine wondered what the effects of Beer on your system would be and if it would be any worse for you.  Well, in this long awaited follow up segment, I’ll try not to go into too much detail, but let me just state a few facts about sitting back and enjoying a nice “brewsky”. 

When you down a can of coke, the initial wave of sugar (an entire days worth remember) is the stressor that your body immediately must deal with.  However, in beer there isn’t nearly as much sugar and so the body’s metabolic reaction is much different.  Its so much different, that alcohol actually has an opposite effect at first making the blood hypoglycemic (lowers blood sugar).  That’s why alcohol consumption for a diabetic can be quite dangerous, especially if they’re on insulin.

A 1-pint Ale has around 30 grams of carbs with approximately 7 calories in every gram of alcohol. When you chug this refreshing Ale your body then goes to work separating the contents of the drink. Though its not the best or most nutritious source, the body can relatively handle the magnesium, selenium, potassium, phosphorus, and vitamin B that are supplied in beer.  But as we all know, it’s the ethanol that really makes your body start hating life. Lets not forget that ethanol is a chemical irritant and your body looks at it like it’s a toxin. Our cells don’t need alcohol to function properly in some elite way nor do they want it.

Alcohol is digested by the small intestines.  From there the alcohol-laden blood travels to there liver where it’s the only place that an enzyme called “alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme” can start breaking it down so there won’t be as much alcohol floating around in your blood affecting your other organs. It does so in two steps: first by breaking the alcohol down into acetaldehyde; and then breaking the acetaldehyde into acetyl. This chemical breakdown produces hydrogen ions which then have to be picked up and escorted out by vitamin B (B-3 I believe).  I would assume that this is why some beer companies choose to keep vitamin B in their ingredients when others do not. While vitamin B is busy trying to clean up the acid build up in the liver, the more important job it has functioning in glycolysis and ATP (energy for the body) is inhibited.  This would be one of many reason why alcohol is considered a depressant. On top of that, excess acetyl results in fatty acid which over time starts to clog the liver.  Fatty liver is the first stage in the dreaded cirrhosis (death) of the liver which is an irreversible stage. 

I could probably go on and on, but I’ll just mention one other fact.  The two most important items that your brain needs to function properly is Oxygen and glucose.  Alcohol is a major inhibitor of the production of glucose and hence when someone downs a few too many, they become “sloshed”.

So Ryan, my answer to you would be…pick your poison.  I’ve chosen my poison to be a Guiness.  Obviously, our bodies are well equipped to handle a coke or beer every once in a while, but  anything in excess may be borderline dangerous.

Medical Fact #2:  The length of the human blood vessels, if stretched out, is such that it would circle the globe 2 1/2 times.